Actually the problem is not in this workflow ... I posted this article as an example for the steps I did... the problem happen if I did a 2 steps custom workflow .. "Failed on Start" and after the weekend .. I can't find my WF on site so I had to re publish it again ... I think both errors related to each other ..

I'll ask this again. I've got a list that contains a field that is type "User". I was planning on using a people picker or people editor control on my app page to get the name of a user's Manager and place that info into the user field, but I'm not sure how to do that.

By the way, before answering the untold question you should answer, where the manager is stored? Do you have this Information in AD (every User has a department, someone is manager of the department), do you have a database with this information, do you have MetaData about it? Or do you habe a simple List?
So, perhaps you see, there are many ways for reaching the aim, of displaying the manager of a user.

Afterwards you read the "Job title" for all the Users in the department (same way) and look up the head of the deparment. Perhaps it's not in the job title but in another field, depending on how the information in the ad is filled.

Well, that's going to be an issue because some people report to someone who isn't labeled as a manager in AD. This is because a) in some large departments it is just a title and doesn't really mean anything and b) IT doesn't usually get notified of when someone is made a manager or supervisor so that we can make the changes in AD nor do our users usually make use of the tools we have given them to make the changes themselves. So, since all I can rely on AD for is their user account and email address, I would like to have the people picker on the form to allow the user to at least find their manager's name and let the site handle the rest.

Ok, you just want to have a field, where the User of the form can put in the one, who is manager, right?
There are different solutions.
1. You go a different way and build a list of managers for each department
2. You let the user enter a name in a normal user-field
3. You fill a dropdownbox with all users of the department, so that the selection is smaler (for this case you can use the code I wrote before, just that you add every member of the department to the dropdownbox).

Well, the big wrinkle is that we have anonymous access on the site and don't allow users to log in, so that is why I was going to used the People editor control so the user could find their manager's name from our AD environment.

Hello,
I created a form using infoPath, and a workflow using visio, and imported it in Sharepoint Designer 2010, but when I press publish, this message shows up "sharepoint designer encountered an error generating task" even my WF contains no problem. I have a full control permission and there is no network problems.
how can I solve it ??